Pain and Suffering

As a life-saving alarm system, pain keeps us focused on distress, for the purpose of relieving it. Pain motivates behavior that will help heal, repair, or improve. A pain in your foot, for example, will motivate you to take the rock off it, get more comfortable shoes, soak it in a tub of warm water, or visit a podiatrist.

If we do not act on the motivation to heal-repair-improve (or fail in our attempts to do so), the alarm of pain intensifies and generalizes. The toothache becomes facial pain; the sore foot seems to throb along the whole side of the body.

When pain intensifies and generalizes over time, it becomes suffering. Suffering is repeated failure to act successfully on the natural motivation of pain to do something that will heal, repair, or improve.

Like its physical counterpart, normal psychological pain (that which is not due to brain disease or severe emotional disorder) is localized in the beginning, usually in the form of guilt, shame, or anxiety about something specific. But when it comes to emotional pain, the behavior choices that will heal, repair, or improve are more ambiguous. Psychological pain is, therefore, more conducive to suffering.

When psychological pain generalizes, it seems to be about the self - a kind of self-ache, if you will. As the alarm of pain intensifies, fixing our focus on distress, we become self-obsessed. Eventually we identify with the pain, in a subtle or overt victim-identity. At that point, we can scarcely perceive the pain of other people, which robs us of the unique power of social healing. Self-obsession makes the alarm of pain louder and more general (mental focus amplifies and magnifies) and isolates us from humane connections that heal.

Anything that numbs or avoids pain undermines its ability to motivate corrective behavior and thereby causes suffering. The most common causes are blame, resentment (expecting someone else to relieve the pain), anger, addictions, and compulsive behavior. All render us powerless to heal, improve, or repair. All cause suffering.

To prevent suffering, we must follow the motivation of pain.

If it's that simple, why is it so hard? In a word, habit.

Those who suffer have gotten into the habit of numbing or avoiding (through blame, resentment, anger, addictions, or compulsions), the pain-signals that would otherwise motivate healing, repairing, or improving.

The first crucial step is to take responsibility for your emotions and pain, so they can work for you instead of against you.

Guilt is about violating your values; the motivation of guilt is to act according to your values, and that is the only thing that will relieve it. Shame is about failure and inadequacy; the motivation is to revaluate, re-conceptualize, and redouble effort to achieve success. Anxiety is a dread of something bad occurring that will exceed or deplete coping skills; the motivation is to learn more about what might happen and develop plans to cope with it.

Painful emotions have a self-healing and self-correcting component. When we take advantage of it, we flourish. When we don't, we suffer.

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I don't mean any disrespect, but I feel this article is overly simplified, judgmental and to be honest, very offensive. I understand with your basic idea, but to say that suffering is essentially a self-inflicted 'habit' and someone in pain is simply self-absorbed and stubborn is, in my opinion a destructive and ignorant claim.
I was emotionally abused and neglected beginning at a very young age. I was told for most of my young life that every problem, everything wrong was my fault because I was worthless and bad. I learned that I was a burden on everyone. I could not ask for the help I desperately needed because I thought the only way I could not harm the world further was to protect everyone from me, my insignificant problems and complaining. Because I believed I was nothing, I got in a physically abusive relationship, eventually started drinking, and was later raped. I suppose that is a victim identity or self obsessed in some twisted way, but I don't believe I had the ability to choose differently until I was at least an adult. Even after years of counseling and the intellectual understanding that this was not true, this 'habit' was so deeply engrained that I was suicidal for years, almost every day, believing the world would be a better place without me.
Even writing this, I feel apologetic because I know people are uncomfortable reading it. But I strongly oppose the popular notion that happiness is totally a choice and if you are 'good', and try hard enough, you can just stop it. Otherwise you're lazy or seeking attention.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not powerless and a self-pitying victim - people can accomplish great things in terms of health, mental health, and life with willingness and work. I would not be here today if it weren't for my work and constant action, and I would never suggest not trying whatever you can to help yourself. But this idea is too universal and is outright toxic to those who have experienced severe trauma, chemical imbalance, or debilitating chronic health problems that inevitably lead to depression. For those who have no support, it is a vicious circle because their condition makes it all but impossible to take the action you imply is such an obvious solution.
Thankfully I no longer blame the young me for any of that, but because this was my identity for over 20 years, I still suffer from tremendous depression, isolation, and shame from so many people saying "why don't you just *choose* happiness" or "if you just think positive, make a change.. "
The one thing I do know is that the last thing people in pain need is more people telling them they're to blame. I've learned (but still have trouble practicing) that self-compassion is the only way to heal. Please don't reinforce the lethal idea that if you're 'allowing' yourself to suffer, you're flawed, weak or failing in some way.